Nazir Ahmad Dalal identified his nephew by his half-burnt maroon sweater. Roshan Jan knew the body was that of her husband because of the beard and the chin. Relatives identified Juma Khan by the ring that was intact on his finger.

As the bodies of five missing men were exhumed on April 6, 2000, besides the shock, the widespread apprehension in the Valley was that the truth of the Pathribal encounter would always lie buried. Now with a CBI chargesheet on its way, relatives can hope for a shot at justice.

It was justice that was stalled at virtually every step. Consider the sequence of events:

• On March 25, 2000, then Union Home Minister L K Advani was on a visit to Chittisinghpora in South Kashmir where five days earlier, unidentified gunmen had lined up 35 Sikhs in front of a gurdwara and killed them.

• Advani was welcomed by the local police and Army officers with good news: the five Lashkar-e-Toiba mercenaries responsible for the massacre had been eliminated in a “surgical operation” by 7 Rashtriya Rifles and local police the previous night.

• Colonel Ajay Saxena, one of those accused in the chargesheet, and Deputy Superintendent of Police Tajinder Singh explained the “operation” using a detailed map.

• Local residents said five men had gone missing from the nearby villages of Brariangan, Halan and Anantnag and alleged that the police and the Army had killed them in a fake encounter calling them “killers of Chittisinghpora.”

... contd.